Broadcaster NTV previously announced that its weekday evening show “NNN News Realtime” is being replaced by a new program called “news every.” More details have been revealed, including the appointment of NEWS member Keiichiro Koyama (25) as a regular reporter. Before he was in NewS, he was a member of BAD and J-Support, which was later renamed K.K.Kity, along with fellow NewS members Hironori Kusano and Shigeaki Kato.
The show will have announcer Takahiko Fujii (38) as the main newscaster, with sportscaster Kimiko Jinnai (45) and newscaster Izumi Maruoka (38) …

X Japan leader Yoshiki has filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court against the music production company Nexstar Corporation, seeking approximately 375 million yen in damages. However, that figure could grow by another 600 million yen.
According to the lawsuit, after X Japan reunited, they entered a contract with Nexstar Corporation in January 2008, which included the use of some recordings. That initial deal was for the sum of 600 million yen in advance royalties and contract money, which has so far been entirely unpaid.
Between 2008 and 2009, the company …

Japan-based Korean singer Iconiq (25) is making a splash and is about to be in a wave of new commercials aired in Japan. She will be in commercials for no less than seven different corporations at the same time only three months after making her debut in Japan. This is said to be a record. Even funnier is that all seven commercials will air together on TV Asahi March 13th. Some of the corporations involved are ANA, Starbucks, and Maserati. With all this momentum, her Japan debut album …

Not only does s/mileage(スマイレージ) have an Official site, but twitter accounts and personal blogs of each member as well have all been started. The Hello!Project band is trying to be more involved with their fans by giving their fans more of what they want – themselves. The site has videos, twitter feeds, bios and you name it. Now all of the members from S/mileage have some sort of public blog either on Gree or on Ameblo which will allow fans to keep up with their daily lives. …

Kirsten Dunst is eating up Akihabara in a new video which covers the Vapor’s “Turning Japanese.”

Pictures of her were taken a few months back in cosplay and “Akihabara Majokko Princess” must be the final result. The famous Japanese artist Takashi Murakami produced the video.

The 24th Japan Gold Disc Awards were presented in Tokyo on Wednesday. If, you haven’t heard of them they are like the Japanese version of the Grammy awards or the MTV music awards. Boy band Arashi stole the show with a total of 10 awards across the multiple categories. It was a precedent setting night as the band took home more awards than ever received before.

Arashi’s awards spanned Artist of the Year, Single of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Music Video. They were among the top selling artists of 2009, with 2.45 million singles and 1.77 million albums sold. They also sold 1.14 million videos and 3.07 million digital downloads.

This spring, TBS will explore the world of men’s rhythmic gymnastics with a new drama series titled “Tumbling.” The show will feature a cast of popular young actors, led by Yusuke Yamamoto (22) in his first lead role in a series.
Yamamoto plays a high school delinquent who has a weakness for women. When an attractive transfer student (Azusa Okamoto) joins the women’s rhythmic gymnastics team, he responds by joining the men’s team and soon discovers a passion for the sport. Since last fall, Yamamoto has been undergoing special gymnastics …

Three female “ambassadors of cute” were appointed by the Foreign Ministry last year to spread the word of “kawii” aboard.
Many youth around the world are fascinated with anime and “cosplay,” or the hobby of dressing up in costumes based on their favorite characters. So, inspired by the characters in Japan’s distinctive “anime” films and “manga”, one of the new ambassadors dresses as a schoolgirl(Shizuka Fujioka) and another as a Victorian doll(Misako Aoki) in voluminous frilly skirts. The remaining of the trio is a very fashionable singer(Yu Kimura) that would …

At 14-years old Beckii’s popularity in Japan rocketed after her YouTube videos were picked up by the popular Japanese website Niko Niko Douga. Her Japanese DVD debut, This is Beckii Cruel: Too Cute to be Real, was released last November and debuted at number eight on Japan’s DVD charts.

On Sunday, Yoshiki announced that X Japan intends to play at this year’s Lollapalooza festival, scheduled for August 6-8 in Chicago. Tentative reports of X Japan performing there first surfaced last month, but now it appears that the possibility will become a reality.